Weekly Spots

POSTED: September 3, 2012

(White Plains, NY) September 3, 2012 - According to Arbitron, San Antonio, TX is the 28th largest radio market with a population of 1,818,600. They are up from 34th a year ago.

• In 1836, following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar. All but two of the Texian defenders were killed. Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie died during the battle, and their defeat spurred the slogan, “Remember the Alamo.”

• San Antonio has a diversified economy with four primary focuses: financial services, government, health care (medicine), and tourism.

• San Antonio has the South Texas Medical Center, which is a conglomerate of numerous major hospitals, clinics, and research and higher educational institutions.

• The city is also home to one of the largest military concentrations in the United States. Fort Sam Houston on the city's northeast side hosts Brooke Army Medical Center, focus of the U.S. Army's medical command and training functions. Lackland Air Force Bas,e on the city's west side, is one of the world's largest training complexes.

• In sports the main attraction is the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association. The Spurs have been playing in San Antonio since 1973 and have won four NBA Championships (1999, 2003, 2005, and 2007). They also have the Silver Stars of the WNBA; the Rampage in the AHL hockey league; the Missions minor league baseball team; NASL Soccer team the Scorpions; and in Arena football, the Talons.

• San Antonio hosts over 100,000 students across its 31 higher-education facilities which include The University of Texas at San Antonio, and the Alamo Community College District's five colleges. Some of the private schools include St. Mary's University, Our Lady of the Lake University, University of the Incarnate Word, Trinity University, and Wayland Baptist University.

• Some of the companies headquartered in San Antonio include: Clear Channel Media & Entertainment, Fairchild Aircraft, Harte-Hanks, Lone Star Brewing Company, Pearl Brewing Company, Whataburger and USAA.

• Famous people from San Antonio: comedian Carol Burnett; former Mayor Henry Cisneros; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; actors Joan Crawford, Olivia de Havilland and Tommy Lee Jones; Former Military Chief Oliver North; news commentator Norah O’Donnell; actor Kevin Alejandro; and singers Christopher Cross and Jade Esteban Estrada.

SAN ANTONIO SPOT TEN

Last week in San Antonio, Auto Dealer spots scored big in the SPOT TEN. #1 was WORLD CAR NISSAN with 727 spots. Coming in #2 was LEGEND KIA with 703 ads, while WORLD CAR KIA captured #3 with 692 spots. TOYOTA DEALER ASSOCIATION landed in #4 airing 670 announcements and GEICO moved from #14 to #5 running 627 commercials. LEGEND MAZADA was #6 with 608 spots, while TOM BENSON CHEVROLET was #7 with 547 ads. THE HOME DEPOT was #8 with 534 spots and WORLD CAR MAZDA secured #9 with 517 spots. Coming in #10 was ACE CASH EXPRESS with 469 spots.

BEDDING SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

The #1 in this category was MATTRESS FIRM with 8,413 spots. SELECT COMFORT dialed up #2 with 6,597 spots, while SLEEPY’S slipped into #3 with 4,845 ads. MATTRESS DISCOUNTERS WEST was #4 with 3,851 spots and SLEEP TRAIN pulled into #5 with 2,453 spots. SLEEP COUNTRY USA was solid at #6 airing 1,564 spots and THE ORIGINAL MATTRESS FACTORY was #7 with 1,233 spots. MANCINI’S SLEEPWORLD moved from #25 to #8 with 1,021 spots, while SLEEP AMERICA captured #9 with 791 spots. Coming in #10 was MATTRESS DISCOUNTERS with 590 spots.

NATIONAL SPOT TEN

NATIONAL STATISTICS -

THE HOPE DEPOT is back on top with 41,637 spots. GEICO fell from #1 to #2 with 33,536 spots, while AUTOZONE zoomed from #22 to #3 with 31,869 ads. MCDONALD’S was back at #4 with 28,379 spots and WAL-MART stayed in the top five, at #5, with 27,416 spots.

Posted: September 3, 2012

OnStar was spearheaded by General Motors in 1995 in collaboration with Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Electronics Corporation. Each of the founding companies brought a specific area of expertise to the enterprise: GM brought vehicle design and integration and a distribution system of millions of vehicles, EDS brought much of the systems development and information management and customer service technologies, while Hughes contributed communications and satellite technology and automotive electronics.

OnStar was introduced at the Chicago Auto Show. OnStar delivered its first product and service to the market in 11 months, in the fall of 1996 for the model year 1997 Cadillac DeVille, Cadillac Seville and Cadillac Eldorado models. From 2002 to 2005, OnStar service was available on vehicles produced by Acura, Audi, Isuzu, Subaru and Volkswagen through a licensing agreement.

OnStar provides subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security, hands free calling, turn-by-turn navigation, and remote diagnostics systems throughout the United States, Canada and China. A similar service is known as ChevyStar in Latin American markets.

This service allows users to contact OnStar call centers during an emergency. In the event of a collision, detected by airbag deployment or other sensors, Advanced Automatic Collision Notification features can automatically send information about the vehicle's condition and GPS location to OnStar call centers. OnStar has 24-hour emergency call centers which are designed to assist emergency response efforts.

All OnStar equipped vehicles have Stolen Vehicle Tracking, which can provide the police with the vehicle's exact location, speed and direction of movement. Their web site claims that more than 821,000 active users of OnStar’s RemoteLink mobile app have checked their tire pressure, how much gas is in their tank and unlocked their doors as part of the more than 14 million interactions that have occurred since the auto industry’s first mobile app debuted in 2010.

On December 19, 2011, GM announced that OnStar would join with Verizon Wireless to offer video chat and streaming content to automobile passengers. According to GM’s latest annual report, OnStar brought in about $300 million in revenues from subscriptions to the services listed above.

On Local Cable, OnStar ran 16,462 spots in the last 12 months with their hottest month being December 2011 with 10,424 spots.

On Radio, OnStar cleared 105,554 spots in the last 12 months with the most spots being run in September 2011 with 29,244, October 2011 they ran 24,214 and in December 2011 they placed 26,324 spots. They have been rather quiet since.

On Broadcast TV OnStar ran only 6,725 spots specifically placed for the service. OnStar is mentioned in GM car ads, but our research is based on specific OnStar spots. December 2011 was their biggest month with 2,902 spots. Since then, they haven’t been above 35 units a month.

POSTED: September 3, 2012

McDonald's is the leader in the fast food industry. The McDonald brothers, Richard and Maurice, opened the first McDonald's Bar-B-Que in 1940 in San Bernardino, California. Eight years later, they closed it down for three months to make alterations to the building and the menu. They shortened the menu to nine items. And they were running a rather successful "fast food" restaurant, when someone came into their lives.

It was 1954 when Ray Kroc, a multi-mixer salesman from back east, traveled to see why someone needed so many milk shake mixers. When he saw the McDonald's brothers operation, it was love at first sight. Kroc became the franchising agent. One year later, Kroc opened up a McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois and incorporated in 1955.

By 1961, Kroc bought complete rights to the McDonald's name and the McDonald brother's interests for $2.7 million.

That same year, McDonald's opened the first Hamburger University where future employees could attend the school and get a Bachelor's degree in Hamburgerology. The University stresses their restaurant's attention to service, cleanliness, quality, and operation procedures.

The first two International McDonald's outlets opened in Canada and Puerto Rico in 1967.

The famous Big Mac was added to their menu in 1968 and eleven years later the Happy Meal was introduced. The menu has since expanded to include: the Egg McMuffin, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Real Fruit Smoothies, salads, the Filet-O-Fish, various chicken sandwiches and products, desserts, french fries, etc.

McDonald's is always inventing new dishes, thereby refining their menu to be healthier. In 2008, McDonald's proclaimed that their chicken products, french fries, Filet-O-Fish, and Hash Browns where changed to have "0 grams trans-fat per labeled serving". They also try to use more ecologically friendly packaging as well.

The famed slogan, "i'm lovin' it" debuted in Germany in 2003 as a global ad campaign. McDonald's is one of the top five advertisers on radio in the United States almost every week.

McDonald's has spread the golden arches to more than 33,000 restaurants serving nearly 68 million people in more than 119 countries every day.

According to their latest annual report, McDonald's created revenues of $27.01 billion with a net income of $5.50 billion, which presents a 12.2% sales growth in 2011. They have 420,000 employees, which is up 20,000 since a few years ago.

Burger King, the number two fast food chain in the world which in 1953 was the brainchild of founders and owners, Keith J. Kramer and Matthew Burns was loosely based on the success of the McDonald's restaurants in San Bernardino, CA. The WHOPPER® sandwich debuted in 1957 as their star product.

In 1959, the company, then in trouble, was purchased by franchisers James McLamore and David Edgerton of Miami.

By 1963, Burger King had opened its first restaurant outside of the United States in Puerto Rico. In 1975, Burger King began using drive-through window service.

Throughout the years, Burger King has changed their menu to give customers a greater variety of meal items. In 1978, Burger King created a new line of sandwiches to include chicken, fish, steak, and ham. They added a breakfast sandwich called the Crossian'wich in 1983 and in 1986, they served Chicken tenders.

Burger King has gone through many acquisitions and mergers over the years. After Pillsbury purchased the fast food chain in 1967, Grand Metropolitan PLC purchased Pillsbury and Burger King in 1989. Grand Metropolitan PLC would merge with Guiness & Co. to create Diageo PLC in 1997. Burger King is currently owned by 3G Capital of Brazil.

The famous slogan, "Have it Your Way" was a part of their 1974 marketing campaign. By 1978 they had moved on to "Best Darn Burger" and in 1986 it became "Burger King Town". In 2001 the slogan was "The Whopper Says" before they returned to their previous slogan of "Have It Your Way" in 2004.

They had a short run with a character dressed as the Burger King, which was dumped due to terrible public response. The new ad campaign is part of the national rollout of the California Whopper, which includes what they say, "is arguably the gastronomic trend of 2011": guacamole.

They claim more than 11 million guests visit BURGER KING® restaurants around the world every day. At the end of fiscal year 2011, Burger King reported it had more than 12,400 outlets in 73 countries.

According to the latest annual report, Burger King had revenues of $2.34 billion with a net income of $88.1 million. They have 34,248 employees.

On Local Cable, McDonald's ran 514,231 spots in the last 12 months compared to Burger King's 271,435 spots. McDonald's biggest month was July 2012 when they ran 55,012 spots, while Burger King was hottest in April 2012 with 37,442 ads.

On Radio, McDonald's certainly rocks the house with 2,260,917 spots in the last 12 months and radio must be ‘lovin it.' Burger King ran 298,138 spots in the same range. Burger King's biggest month on radio was last September 2011 when they ran 77,853 spots, while McDonald's blew it out in June 2012 with 200,011 spots.

On Broadcast TV, McDonald's ran 844,226 spots in the last month, while Burger King cleared 255,013 spots. Burger King ran the most in April 2012 with 27,769 spots, while McDonald's ran hottest in July 2012 with 101,236 spots in the month.

Posted: September 3, 2012

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